Italy did not build a pavilion. It built a town. Marcello Piacentini designed eight buildings spread over 250 by 550 feet, adapting rather than copying fourteenth- to sixteenth-century models. A machicolated tower like those of the Palazzo Vecchio or Siena's Mangia dominated the court. There were a loggia from Florence's Via dei Neri, a Villa Medici facade, the Bargello's outside stair with its Marzocco lion, a cloister, the octagonal dome of a Tribuna, and a Piazza Grande and a Piazzetta with a Venetian well-head. At about $200,000 it was, Todd said, the largest sum any nation spent on a pavilion at San Francisco.
At its heart the Casa Italiana held the Salone Reale, with a blue vault of gold stars, a bronze Capitoline Wolf and Pieretto Bianco's mural 'Apotheosis of Rome'. The Tribuna honored Italians from Columbus and Galileo to Mazzini, Garibaldi and Marconi. Other rooms held Burano lace, Piranesi engravings and the Canessa collection of della Robbias and antiquities. The pavilion was dedicated on April 24, 1915, in the Piazza Grande, 'in the very shadow of the tower'. Within a month Italy had entered the war.
It did more than represent Italy. It was Italy.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 263
At a glance
- Eight buildings on 250 by 550 feet of ground.
- Cost about $200,000, the largest any nation spent on a pavilion (Todd); total participation about $400,000.
- Dedicated April 24, 1915; site dedicated June 3, 1914.
- Architect Marcello Piacentini; the Official Guide names his assistant, Giacomo Giobbe.
Afterward
Not recorded; presumably auctioned and wrecked. The site is Presidio land west of the Palace of Fine Arts.
Sources
- Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), ch. XXXV, p. 204
- Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), ch. XLIX, pp. 263-269
- Official Guide of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915), p. 48
- John D. Barry, The City of Domes (1915), preface (murals by Bianco)